Short term ferm temp change

Hi everyone. I usually use the water bottle method for my ferm temp control but I moved into a new house with a very cool basement. First 24 hrs the fermometer read 61-62 and I was worried about being too cold and getting poor attenuation so I moved it to my upstairs bath tub. The next day after work (18 hrs later) it was at 74 and blowing off like crazy. I then moved it back to the basement where it crept back down to 62 changing about a degree or less an hour.Im guessing it took a while to climb up to 74 and was probably only over 68 degrees for 10 hours. I'm entering this beer in a competition where it's being served to the public and am very worried its going to be estery. The style is robust porter, yeast wlp001. Any help is appreciated

Greg

I routinely ferment WLP001 at 59F ambient temp, so just remember in the future that 61-62 is just fine. Remember that the actual ferementation temp is always about 3-8 degrees higher than the ambient temp. Yeast put off heat as they process sugar.

SO, at 74 ambient temp, you were really fermenting closer to 77-82F, which is too high and the fast, violent fermentation showed it. A slowww, uneventful fermentation is a CLEAN fermentation.

As is, you may have some ester production. The good news is the robust porter style might cover it a bit, the bad news is with WLP001, it is going to be a fruity ester, which isn't going to mesh well with the porter style if it shows up.

All you can do at this point is hope it conditions out in the time you have. Let it bulk age in the fermenter at room temp for as long as you can leading up to the competition, and bottle/keg on the last possible day to allow carbonation time for the competition.

How much time do you have for the competition? Are you bottling or kegging?

Also, in the future, remember to hold onto some bottles of your good batches and have them sitting around waiting for competitions. You'll do much better. Most of the stuff I enter in competitions was brewed 3-6 months prior to the competition, with the exceptions being Hefe's and most IPA/APAs. Even if I plan on kegging the beer, I still brew with a good 3-4 extra weeks before the competition or serving even to make sure it's good and give some room to fix it if it isn't.

Brewing something for a competition or a serving event without some wiggle room or a backup plan can be a disaster!

Good luck!

Worrying won't do anything but bum you out. It'll probably be good since it's got some roast character to balance with the esters. I've yet to have a super-clean tasting porter...don't know if I'd like it anyway. My 2¢

Thanks for the input, as I mentioned all temps were read off the fermometer NOT ambient temperature. My beers usually blow off so I'm not too concerned with the fact it was going wild exactly when it always does in the ferm process. Just the brief rise to 74

Only 3 more weeks until I keg it to sit and carb for a week.

Just FYI, a fermometer isn't exactly reading the internal fermentation temp, either. It is reading somewhere between ambiant and the true internal temp. You'd have to have something actually in the liquid to accurately read the actual fermentation temp. If your fermometer was reading 74, I'd still expect the actual fermentation temp to be closer to 77-79F.